Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

About the show

A podcast about the design, development, and business of great software. Each week thoughtbot is joined by the people who build and nurture the products we love.

Episodes

  • Poster Image

    67: The Data Optimist

    September 22nd, 2013  |  Season 2  |  29 mins 41 secs

    Ben Orenstein and Hilary Mason, Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners, talk about Data Science, Bitly and Cheeseburgers.

  • Poster Image

    66: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

    September 15th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  40 mins 18 secs

    Ben talks with Anthony Eden about DNSimple, programming languages and code retreats.

  • Poster Image

    65: No! Videos Private!

    September 8th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  38 mins 25 secs

    On this episode Ben talks with Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz about Wistia

  • Poster Image

    64: Wistfully Into the Air

    September 1st, 2013  |  Season 2  |  36 mins 18 secs

    In this episode of Giant Robots Ben talks with Des Traynor about intercom, concise communication. blogging and customer outreach.

  • Poster Image

    63: Knowledge Bomb!

    August 25th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  48 mins 37 secs

    Ben and Chad discuss mentoring, job hunting tips and FAQ

  • Poster Image

    62: Family Business

    August 18th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  31 mins 39 secs

    In this of episode of Giant Robots, Ben speaks with Natalie Nagele and Ilya Sabanin about Wildbit, Beanstalk, and work flow.

  • Poster Image

    61: Having the Craic with Paul

    August 11th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  34 mins 56 secs

    In this episode Paul and Ben talk about tito, funconf, and organizing conferences.

  • Poster Image

    60: Deep Dive

    August 4th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  34 mins 1 sec

    In this week's episode Ben discusses effective business practices and advice for optimal page design with special guest Patrick McKenzie.

  • Poster Image

    59: Nowhere to Hide

    July 28th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 52 secs

    In this episode, Ben Orenstein speaks with thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris about the technical interview process at thoughtbot, and more.

  • Poster Image

    58: A Thousand Neckbeards

    July 21st, 2013  |  Season 2  |  31 mins 12 secs

    This week Ben Orenstein, Pat Brisbin, and Mike Burns talk about Haskell, Linux, functional and dynamic programming, Conway's Game of Life, and much more.

  • Poster Image

    57: Delayed Gratification

    July 14th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  28 mins 10 secs

    In this episode, Ben Orenstein is joined by Michael Klett, Co-founder and tech lead of Chargify. Ben and Michael discuss the evolution of Chargify and bumps along the way, underwear subscriptions, Michael’s transition from hardware to software, negativity in the Rails community, slow tests, and much more.

  • Poster Image

    56: Code in a Bubble Bath

    July 7th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  36 mins 36 secs

    In this episode Ben Orenstein is joined by Alex MacCaw, creator of Spine, formerly of Twitter, and now a developer at Stripe. Ben and Alex talk about travel, writing, code, and couch surfing.

  • Poster Image

    55: The Value of Flow

    June 30th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  42 mins 29 secs

    In this episode Ben Orenstein speaks with designer and founder of Authentic Jobs, Cameron Moll, about Authentic Jobs, design, the value of flow and family, and much, much more.

  • Poster Image

    54: Build your stuff on the side and have a good time

    June 23rd, 2013  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 22 secs

    In this episode, Ben Orenstein is joined by 17 year old Jack Kaufman, author of The Found a Business Book. Ben and Jack discuss Jack's inspiration for the book and how he got all his interviews, the other opportunities it's led too, the common themes he uncovered in his interviews, the differences between those who got funding and bootstrappers, working on the book while in highschool, marketing he's doing, his plans for the future, the issue with college computer science programs, his fears about the future, and much more.

  • Poster Image

    53: Not everything needs to be extracted

    June 16th, 2013  |  Season 2  |  38 mins 29 secs

    In this episode Ben Orenstein is joined by Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale from Tilde. They discuss bootstrapping a business and the model behind Tilde, their breakdown of product development and consulting, and how they all met. They also talk about designing APIs and frameworks that people actually want to use, how teaching helps them be better framework developers, how they can beat the competition, how supporting multiple languages and frameworks can ruin your app's experience, the big surprises as they've launched, Ember.js' push to 1.0 and beyond, the difference between Ember.js and Backbone.js and why JavaScript matters, and much more.

  • Poster Image

    52: You look really fancy in your tuxedo

    June 9th, 2013  |  Season 1  |  58 mins 19 secs

    In this special episode, number 52, and our 1 year anniversary episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Ruby and Rails core team member Aaron Patterson, thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris, and a live studio audience. The trio discuss Rails 4, observers, callbacks, dubstep, namespaces, Scheme, functional programming, thread safety in Rails, what it would take to remove callbacks from Rails and why you would want to do it, what should be in our anniversary episode, dealing with Rails security issues, why Aaron likes to work on Rails, meeting people's expectations, Vim, intuitive software, and so much more.